_O blessed Letters, that combine in one
All ages past, and make one live with all:
By you we doe conferre with who are gone,
And the dead-living unto councell call:
By you th' unborne shall have communion
Of what we feele, and what doth us befall_.

_SAM. DANIEL Musophilus. 1602_.





INTRODUCTORY


It is curious to reflect that the library, in our customary sense,
is quite a modern institution. Three hundred years ago there were no
public libraries in Europe. The Ambrosian, at Milan, dates from 1608;
the Bodleian, at Oxford, from 1612. To these Angelo Rocca added his in
Rome, in 1620. But private collections of books always existed, and
these were the haunts of learning, the little glimmering hearths over
which knowledge spread her cold fingers, in the darkest ages of the
world. To-day, although national and private munificence has increased
the number of public libraries so widely that almost every reader is
within reach of books, the private library still flourishes. There